August 12, 2012
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Good Aunt
Thursday I was saddened to hear of the loss of one of my favorite aunts, Irene. A couple of ironic things is that her name was not actually Irene and she was technically never my aunt. Huh? Well let me explain. Her real name was Florence and her middle name was not Irene but for some reason, they called her Irene. I’m not sure why. I think tomorrow I will ask. But in the meantime, let me continue to explain the story. My mom was the youngest of nine, her oldest sibling was born in 192fucking1 if you can believe that (and yes, he is still alive) and my mom was born in 1934. One of her brothers, Fred, married Aunt Irene in 1945. The divorced sometime in the 1960s so technically she was not my aunt by the time I was born in 1975.
But that doesn’t mean we didn’t think of her as an aunt. Shit, I knew her better than I knew just about any of my other 11 aunts. I used to always refer to her as Good aunt to distingush her from another aunt I did not like. She hung out with my mom a lot back in the 80s and especially the 90s. They were practically best friends, although since my mom died in 2000 I have not seen her nearly as often or nearly enough. But she was about as great as they came, I always loved talking to her as she was not your typical old person.
One story I found out about her tonight was when her granddaughter (and my second cousin, Tina) got married some 19 years ago. See, Tina married a black man which in my family was wrong and caused much drama. I come from an old school, Italian family who, like many Italian families, were racist. In fact several family members disowned her (although they did eventually all reconcile) and others looked down upon her. Tonight Tina’s husband told me the story of when he first met Aunt Irene. In spite of the fact that much of the family wanted nothing to do with him just because he was black, Aunt Irene didn’t care. She was playing bingo at the time and she said hi to him and treated him just like any other member of the family.
The past few years have been tough on my aunt. Like many older people, a lot of people around her have been dying, including a couple of her friends, several of her siblings, and sadly one of her sons. So she started saying that she was tired of living and was ready to die. Thursday morning she died peacefully at home surrounded by her family. Nobody wants to go, but if there is a way to go, that would be it. She was a wonderful lady. She will be missed.
Comments (4)
Wow, getting divorced in the 60′s and eventually marrying a black man. She was way ahead of her time! I think about myself and living back 50 or 100 years ago and wonder what i would be like. I would hope i’d be accepting of others. I REALLY want to see gay people get the same rights as everyone else….it seems every generation has to go through a group of people being unfairly treated.
@ShamrockLover - lol oh I should clarify, my aunt DID NOT marry a black man but her granddaughter married a black man. I need to edit that.
She sounds like a lady who was ahead of her time. I miss talking to my close relatives who have passed on, mostly my mother in law who died last September–I can’t believe it’s been almost a year. Your story reminds me that we need to communicate with the people we love now,because we don’t know what tomorrow will bring!
@heckels – she was still way ahead of her time